Why Lee Petty Protested Son Richard's Supposed First NASCAR Win

• Richard Petty's father Lee lodged a protest of the scoring—confirmed by his mother Elizabeth’s scorecard—to steal what would have been Richard's first Cup win in 1959.

• It turned out Lee was right about being the first driver to complete 150 laps, which took about an hour for NASCAR’s scorer Johnny Bruner to confirm.

• “Daddy knew that if he won, we’d take home more money,” said Richard years later.

If ever there was a NASCAR race destined to continue to make headlines long into the future, it was the 150-mile event at Atlanta’s Lakewood Speedway in June of 1959.

Long before he was known as “The King,” 21-year-old Richard Petty was riding high following the race when he pulled into the pits located on a spit of land that jutted into the lake in the middle of the one-mile dirt oval. His convertible Olds had just taken the checkered flag first in what he thought was his first victory. Until his father Lee lodged a protest of the scoring—confirmed by his mother Elizabeth’s scorecard.

“We go racing all day,” Richard Petty later told radio announcer Barney Hall. “The place was really dirty and dusty. They flagged me the winner. I had never won a race, so this was great, man. Then somebody came up to me and said there was a protest of the race. I said, ‘What’d I do wrong?’ They said someone said they had run more laps than I did. I turned around and it was my dad.”

It turned out Lee was right about being the first driver to complete 150 laps, which took about an hour for NASCAR’s scorer Johnny Bruner to confirm. The next day, Lee’s explanation ran in The Atlanta Constitution under a headline of “Father Knows Best.”

“I won the race,” said Lee. “I lapped Richard twice when he was in the pits. He’s my boy and I’d love for him to win a race, but he’ll have to earn it. This wouldn’t be the right way for him to get his first victory.”

And, the rest of the story? Lee was driving a 1959 Plymouth and NASCAR was paying $200 more for a victory by a current model car than by a long-in-the-tooth 1957 Olds convertible like Richard was driving. When the total winner’s purse comes to $2,200, that’s a pretty penny. There were also championship points to consider in a year that Lee went on to win his third Grand National title after winning the first Daytona 500 in a photo finish.

Richard would have to wait until the following season before winning his first race.

The headline might have been “Mother Knows Best” as well. The scoring system at the time had one person following each car for NASCAR and another, appointed by the entrant, was also assigned to each car. In the case of the Pettys, where racing was always a family affair,

Lee’s car was scored by his wife Elizabeth, whose card turned out to be accurate on this dusty day when Bruner double-checked the running score kept of all cars by NASCAR. Elizabeth also kept the books for Petty Engineering, which took home a total of $3,600 on a day that helped establish Richard as the team’s future driver. He may not have beaten his father, but he finished ahead of the only other two drivers on the lead lap—Buck Baker and Curtis Turner.

“Daddy knew that if he won, we’d take home more money,” said Richard years later. “There wasn’t any arguing.” Al Thomy, who covered the race for The Constitution, wrote that Richard took the setback “like the son of a man.”